“Meanwhile, we named our snake Miracle because it was a miracle my wife left it into the house”.
David Barringer

The Corner of Delights – This is my Blog. The links, the posts, the conferences, the dates, the friends, the videos, the photos, the texts, the articles, the favorites, the fonts, the ideas, the things, the web, the brands, the design, the family, as saudades, the references, and the things separated by commas. At the moment I’m translating all the main posts to English. Please be patient!

A few months a go I was invited to talk about “Genesis”. What a big word. They asked me to talk about ideas. Where do they come from.Ok, so going straight to the point, I feel that ideas can appear…

- from Love. When we’re drunk we are more engaged, we believe more, we get obsessed, we think quicker, we’re more aware, more sensible

- from Insurrection. When we’re frustrated and want to change, when we’re stopped and want to start, when we regret and want to do things in a different way

- from Search. When we know we can do better and we cannot sleep, when we search, read another paragraph, play with another word searching for the perfect “naming”, try to find the inner silence to let the ideas settle

- by Accident. Because a plane got broken and two people started talking, because someone’s terrible in the kitchen and a culinary course is an excuse to start a new brand

- from People. Because most of the best ideas come from the others. From friends, clients, colleagues, friendly colleagues and friendly clients

- from Resilience. When you decide to continue after a fight, when you decide to continue after a fight and when you decide to continue after a fight..until the next when you decide to continue to go along with your partners because its always better go along than alone

- from History. That comes from a previous project that went well. From someone who made a compliment, a video that ended up in style or because it make sense to maintain a team that worked so well the 1st time

- from Sharing. Because when you give you get back

- from a Challenge. Of saying yes to something theta you’ve never done before…and it just feels right

- from Passion. For typography, for people, for spaces, for a good excuse to start something

- from a Dream. Because sometimes its good to sleep with a not book next to the pillow.

- from an Impossible Goal that can be at a distance of an email or 8 months of a painful “fight”

- from Friendship. Because – going against what Adrian Shaughnessy (that I really admire) – and other morons say, the companies, the fun, the ideas and the projects are made out of friendship

- from Conscience. From being connected, awakened, informed, worried and aware

- from a Purpose. Of wanting something for the good, the others. For personal development. Because its gonna endure

- from Chaos because I believe the chances come from Chaos but don’t come by chance. If we turn on our consciousness we can see what others leave behind, we’re able to smile when others can’t get it, we vibrate when we feel the “vibrato”, we taste when others eat in a rush. Consciousness connects all these little things and ideas come to life. Small or Big ideas. What I feel is that ideas cannot be measured in size. Than can only be measured by “distance”.

The difference between a small from a bid idea its not the weight, is the distance. The idea “falls” into our head and since is round..rolls a bit. The one that stays closer its the small idea, a common goal, ready to be solved. If if goes further it will make us get up to go after her, to run, to dig, to chase her. In that moment that idea stops being a common idea and becomes a Purpose.

The ideas that arise by fear..get lost in the way. The Purpose its the subtleness that makes run the distance between going from here to… .

Last Sunday we where invited by Nelson to facilitate a workshop with kids from a troubled neighborhood in Setúbal. The goal was to give these youngsters the the tools to better lead the future of their own community. This was just a small move in a broader action set up by Nelson and the Municipality of Setúbal.Thanks Nelson. This felt great. Thanks Tiago and Catarina, you (are) have great friends. Obrigado Mateus for the illustrations.

The first one shows a team mood throughout the development of a small project in October 2012. Like an experience curve, there’s always ups and downs and this will help us better plan the next workshop and the teams for the “down” moments.The other framework shows the wealth perception curve in a company over the last 20 years.Both of them are powerful tools. These “designs” are so simple, tough they make a huge difference when we’re trying to make a point.One advice? Print perceptions to get quick reactions.

I was invited by the 2 main universities in Lisbon to design a video that could represent the future merging between them. The video is a bit different from my previous work. More arty than commercial, more environmental and less emotional, less time to think giving it more thought, less time to shoot but more directed, with less people bur more inhabited, a bit more subtle and probably with a little bit more substance. The result was judged with an simple ovation which is not a bad sign.Thanks Mariana for the support and planning. Thanks Bárbara for the design and João for the motion graphics. Thanks all for the great effort.

This photo was taken last friday on a meeting with a client. A production company whom I work since 2005. The code name for the project we’ve been developing together is “cemique” and in the last months I’ve been only a bot more than a spectator. I’ve been more involved as a mentor/critic. The real work has been done by Bárbara and Mariana.Before convincing B2R to move forward with the project I’ve challenged Bárbara and Mariana on how to learn about “Design Thinking”, on how to bring innovation to a sector in decline, on how to learn from clients, on how to deal with their daily problems. They would have to learn by doing by facing problems, talking and listening and living what they are feeling. This was what these girls did in the last couple of months.By looking at this pic I almost don’t recognize them. I’m proud because they’ve grown so much since october. At our office we don’t talk about design. We do design. B and M took a chance to learn by helping others and that’s amazing.Now, after the successful proposals/ideas comes the difficult part. Knowing how to take those ideas forward and transform them into real profit. Let’s now design for profit. Go, go, go.

“Wanna shoot the Making Of for the 2013 Summer Collection? We like your language and you even know Zé, The Lisbon Tailor. Makes perfect sense. Would be great to have at the setting capturing all those kids running around wearing our brand. Let’s find the perfect sunny sunday and do this. What do you say?”

Restaurants. First it was “Entra“, then “Peisheirada” and now “Quermesse“. I’ve decided to show the process in this last one. Still on time to see the process of creating the brand, the environment and the experience. This is the second week of the project and we expect to have the door open mid December. Congrats to Bruno and Susana for having the guts to open a new business in this difficult economic period. Thanks to Joana Mateus, Ana and Filipe from “Oficina Colectiva” for going along and accepting this challenge.

Two days ago I’ve bumped against a short video of Bruce Mau explaining how he sees design as leadership method. “We imagine a vision and systematically build to that vision”. Today it was John Maeda….and again, design as leadership. I feel like saying that after a certain “amount” of experience, designers tend to go back to the basics. How does this sound? (:

September is month of Design Thinking! At least for me (:
Wednesday at the StartUpPirates and yesterday at FBAUL (Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon) for a little talk with Tiago Nunes. We’ve used the fishing for ideas project to explain the basic principles of Design Thinking and to share our findings (and troubles) on how to communicate and involve the client along the journey.
This was a short contribution to the Service Design Summer course organized by André Gouveia with the help of Cooperativa Criativa. These guys are responsible for some of the main events around service design here in Lisbon and are doing a great job.In the end I was able to comment of the final results of the 3 projects presented by the students and that was just the confirmation of that week’s intense work.

More “Design Thinking” still to come this month with the DConfestival in Berlin. The 1st international conference around the topic. Since I was a student there and I was also involved with the organization I can take someone with me for a special price! Feel free to contact me!

Tomorrow I will be presenting the “fishing for ideas project” at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbonfor a service design course organized by “cooperativa criativa”. Check it out here http://servicedesignfbaul.wordpress.com/

I have to say that part of the hard work – putting people on track – was already done. These pirates know how to keep people in motion and in good spirit.

For the workshop we took the classic “wallet experience” from the Stanford DSchool and reinvented it. Instead of building something individually we worked with groups, instead of wallets we adapted to the pirates scene andwe asked people to design “swords”, instead of one hour we gave them a bit more time. We (the facilitators) defined 3 different personas and 3 different well described swords – yes we had to do some extra home work – and made the groups design a new “tool” for us.

Seems like something like this could work with other topics. In the end a 1 minute pitch “a la Dschool Style” with the teams showing stunning creative work, and a 30 minute talk about the process by showing a practical case studie (http://fishingforideas.wordpress.com/).

The theme of the conference (IgnitePortugal) at Audax/ISCTE was Cultural Entrepreneurship and Creative Industries and I was invited to talk about one of my latest personal projects – toyno.
The drawing is from Vanessa Silva, she is part of this wonderful project called livescketching.

If your curious about the presentation have a look (portuguese only). I’ve tried to show the students that you don’t need that much money to create a new project.
Ok, I have to admit…it helps having some designers in the startup team!

Football is for everyone. By the end of the month these amazing girls will be on national TV.
Yes, Portugal eliminated Holland a few days ago but the color of the t-shirts was already chosen! Pure coincidence (;

It’s my pleasure to announce that the “fishing for ideas” project is among the best service/business design work selected for the final exhibition of 23rd Biennial of Design International – Museum for Architecture and Design in Ljubljana – Slovenia.
From around 450 entries we are in the run for the final award among other 90 candidates. It will be difficult since this is a contest with tradition in product design…still, it’s an honor to have the opportunity to be there to talk about our project, to be in the official design book and, most important, seeing our work being recognized as truly innovative.

We’ve applied for the “Globalisation” – Social Local (Categorie) and here are a a few words from the curators:” Selected works for the BIO 23 exhibition show an impulse of how designers and the works they create are influenced by modern technologies, digitalisation and new technologies. Other selected works show contemporary designers embracing the resourcefulness of nature and its processes, while others display an amazing capability to use technology.”

Tiago is in Australia “being great”. This is your recognition. Thanks for those great months and we will work again in the future I’m sure.
Thanks also to all the people who helped us during this process. Online and Offline.

If you’ll watch the video probably you don’t need to read the text because I will be repeating myself. This video – the App – is the result of the last 3 months of the design thinking course at the HPI in Potsdam. Besides developing a concept and identity for the 1st International Design Thinking Festival we (Carol, Claudia, Daniel and me) ended up doing an application to be used by design juries to evaluate design projects.

A few months ago I read something from Don Norman where he said that he gave up being a jury in design (product) competitions because he felt everyone was voting based on aesthetics and not on the real value of the project – empathy through the user, usability, acceptance and intuition (based on experience).

Well, we believe we’ve found a way to convince Don Norman in to being a jury again.
We developed an application that basically allows design juries to rate projects based on some interesting criteria – intuition, human centeredness, simplicity/complexity, power of the idea and holism.
Through very simple and intuitive actions we can use the different exercises to generated a tangible number in the end. Measuring feelings…maybe not. But at least we can start a discussion.

Let me warn you that this is just a prototype. We had some 2 or 3 paper, iterate and built 2 or 3 physical/3d prototypes and ended up with this practical app (1st version) design in two short and busy days.
Some time has passed but we are willing to test this for real. Are you curious? Do you have some suggestions for new criteria? Would you use this for other types of evaluations? Do you think it’s ridiculous? Give us your hints and ideas!

I wanted to try something different and so I went on vacations with a small handy camera. I didn’t take any pictures this time but I’ve shot close from 1000 short videos during those sixteen days. The camera I’ve used has a special feature. The sound. It has a digital built in microphone and this made me be more aware about sounds and sound of images.
I had no idea in mind for the composition or theme so I decided to gather as much information as I could. In the end and after some months I’ve decided to start looking at all the material I had and some patterns start emerging.

This is the 1st video of a series of 4 that are simply based on basic camera movements that point directions and ways to see things in different ways. POV exercises. The video shows no tricks or special editing. There’s no music composition. What you ear goes with what you see in those specific moments.

We all have different backgrounds, most of us where raised in different social environments and ended up developing different activities in adult life. Another fact is that despite these differences we all went and where engaged in the same activities while we where kids.
In kindergarten we played, share a lot of experiences with the space and other kids around us, sleep during the afternoons to recover some power, engaged in activities with objects or everything around us and of course, made a lot of mistakes by taking chances.

As we grow old, our playfulness is gradually substituted by a lot of studying. We all want to be good students and spend a lot of time worrying about the future and normally focusing on one goal. Finishing university is always a promise for a good future.
In the end, almost everyone ends up focusing in one specific area of knowledge. We become isolated by digging our heads in some books or in different contrast monitors. We loose the idea of team spirit by ego demand and we are not able to differentiate ourselves from the ones next to us. No one’s is looking around. Everybody ends up doing the same thing.

I don’t want to focus on the societal or governmental facts of education but on the actual facts and changes perpetuated by the physiological changes in our brains. While we get old our prefrontal cortex develops and makes us more aware and focus while making decisions. The problem is that gaining more consciousness in our actions also makes us have more constrains while doing it. We become more afraid, blocked and limited by “judging” too much our own thoughts.
We end up suppressing creativity by thinking too much.
This means we loose the ability to think and act like children.
What I suggest is that by introducing little changes in the way we live our lives and even in the way we work, we can keep on being and acting like kids without compromising our “decision making” processes.

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”. This beautiful quote by Pablo Picasso sets the tone for some solutions or changes I would love to see implemented in more companies and that I’m already putting in practice today.

Play.
Playing gives us more energy and sends a signal to our brains that we are active. It increases our sense of freedom, brakes barriers by making us feel more connected to a group. Makes us feel we are physically part of something. Generates empathy by making us feel less ashamed.

Space.
Space plays an important role. It’s not by chance that Stanford DSchool just put out a book revealing the importance of a creative and friendly space and the way it impacts creativity. Space stimulates and potentiates interactions. Steve Jobs wanted to place the toilet in the middle of the company for people to bump on each other on their way.
Space can free your mind if it’s blue or it can make you go quicker if it’s red for example. Space is to be used with no restrictions. Go on the floor, walls, ceiling. Create your own space.

Learn by Doing.
When we are kids we learn by doing. While we still don’t rationalize we learn by tracing and mapping the interactions our body produces with the space around us. That’s how we learn. By doing and not by thinking. While using our hands we are creating physical memories that will be retained by our body and neuronal systems. Making our ideas tangible will have the same effect. We can detect and see and touch what we thought of doing by really doing it. And we can pretty soon detect mistakes we couldn’t even think about before having that tangible “product” in our hands.

Nap.
It’s not by chance that a lot of leaders and creative minds take power naps in the afternoon. Sleeping improves learning and working memory. It heightens our senses and creativity, it increases alertness and improves health. During our sleep is where our brains is silently making all the connections between the information we absorb at different times.
Ah Ah moments and more common during “nap” times!

Team.
While we are kids we love playing with other kids, without making to much judgment. Learning together and sharing ideas and building on ideas of others and “joining” others ideas was almost a sport while we where young. We can bring this spirit today by mixing different elements in a team. We don’t need to know the same stuff. We just need to find a common base to star a work or to put up a great multidisciplinary team.

Just bring on that kid’s spirit.

One last quote form Jonah Lehrer: “By thinking of ourselves as a child, we end up thinking in more child-like ways. The end result is that we regain the creativity lost with time.”

This text was the summary of the talk (How can we use our past to design a better future?) I gave with Inês Brito at the University of Zaragoza/Spain – March 2012

Guta Moura Guedes, Ana Cunha, Rui Vieira, Diogo Teixeira and José Cabral where some of the names present in the debut of #PFC (Pensar Fora da Caixa) Conference in Coimbra. I couldn’t go last year but I was very curious about all the dynamics around this conference. This year – next saturday – I’ll be there as a speaker. The them for my panel is The Future of the Analog.

I will share the stage with Telma Rodrigues from #PFC, with Florian Kaps (founder and marketing director of Impossible Project) – via Skype, Ludovic (Analog Nights) and Rita Branco (Miolo).It seems that the organizers of #PFC fall in love by the “fishing for ideas”project and I couldn’t say no. I like the theme a lot and I’ve been writing about the relation between the digital/physical for some time now.Here and here for example.Big responsibility but a lot of motivation to join everyone for the weekend.

Another great surprise is the presence this year of Sérgio Hydalgo – Responsible for the music section at ZDB-Galeria Zé dos Bois – in the panel “The Challenge of Planning and Curatorship”. Sérgio is one of my best friends. We’ve played together in several musical projects from the end of the 90′s. Fortunately – or unfortunately – we left the microphones and guitars aside. I dedicated myself to the “fishing” business and Sérgio continues connected to the music scene but in a different side of the stage.

Check this ridiculous memory from a more recent past (2008).Thanks #PFC and see you soon Coimbra.

People ask me if it’s possible to measure the impact of the video? Well, I still don’t know if they’ve sold more t-shirts and mugs but the fact is that after 6 weeks they have more 4500 followers on Facebook. Spontaneous followers (around 3000 of them in the 3 weeks following the launch of the video). I’ve heard stories of people who showed the video in inspirational group meetings, friends who got to know this via online news (Vogue, Clix, Publico, Destak…). Friends who got to know this via friends of friends. Hundreds of anonymous people who wrote that they where identifying themselves with the images and the amazing song from Márcia. In some newspapers I was promoted form “designer” to “director” and from Rui Quinta to “Rui Quintas” – plural now! Thousands of shares online and in the end almost 100.000 views which for the portuguese reality it’s a big and valuable number. At a personal level it was also interesting. From this exposure I was also contacted for potential new assignments. I will give some more time into making “moving images” in the future. All of this was not bad. Not bad at all.

Great to see that after 5 years, Helpo still knows what to do and how to use the identity we created at that time. I’m very proud of what I’m seeing in this picture that was taken a few days ago. More important than that they are achieving the goals they had set also at that time for the children of Mozambique. Congratulations for the great work.Want to helpo?

About a year ago Zé asked for my help. “I have an idea. I want to present a campaign to the city of Lisbon”. I (almost) never question him when he comes with these “semi” crazy ideas. I try to help whenever I have time. One year after, Zé is probably the 1st blogger in the world to sign a campaign for a city. Congratulations again Zé. All of this because you have the courage to continue doing what you love. Thanks for the opportunity of letting me be the designer of your campaign. The campaign you’ve wrote, photographed and deserved.

How I took this month to dedicate myself to a new and very important project. The name of this project could be “Giving a hand on the family business”. I invited my friend Tiago Nunes to work 3 days full time on this with me and the motivation to do this couldn’t be greater. My family works in the “fish” industry for more than 100 years and my father is working in this business for more than 30 years now. He run’s the oldest company in the market – 26 years. As everybody knows we live in difficult times and everything changed for the worst in the last years “economically” speaking. Besides that, the POS for the company changed brutally from the center of the city of Lisbon to about 40Km to the outside which means that all the transactions in this chain where inverted. People in the markets and fishing shops stopped going there to buy to the wholesalers and the wholesalers (almost all of them) stated working as distributors bringing the fish directly to these people. All of these changes are having a negative impact in the company and only a change in the processes and way of making business will change everything for the best. What we are trying to do is to develop an innovation process that will lead us to new ideas, new approaches. In the end we want to implement a sense of balance in the company and to make it more profitable and sustainable for the coming years. For me personally it’s a huge challenge to do this having all my family involved but the 1st days showed us that is possible to do great things (trust us).

These are just some insights on what this project is. There’s so much to discover along the way. We wanted to make this project public (with some limitations of course) and so we built a website with daily updates on the process.
We want people to navigate with us and to join us for this adventure. Feel free to share ideas, insights, things you’ll think will help us innovate.

This was our presentation at the University of Zaragoza for the Independent Design Week last monday. We talked about the importance of bringing the playfulness of a child to the development of the work we do “today”. We didn’t focus so much on the social/educational aspects and constrains imposed by our society but on the intrinsic physiological constrains produced by our own brains while we grow up. Can we be more innovative by integrating playful actions, playful spaces, group discussions and a nap in the middle of the day? We think so! And we didn’t take a nap in the middle of the talk but we were able to bring people on the stage to play and redefine the stage with us.

This video was showed at the Service Design Drinks – Lisbon. It was the result of the service we created in the last Global Service Jam.
The Global Service Jam is an amazing event.
Hundreds of participants worldwide have 48hr to design a service based on a surprise theme that is only revealed when the challenge begins. Join a team of multidisciplinary people you never met before. Get ready to sleep only a few hours. Be prepared to eat really quick (the food was actually really good). Open your mind to different opinions. Learn as much as you can from the “coaches” (in this case “cooperativa criativa“) and the external mentors. Get in contact with a lot of creative and fun techniques that will help unblock your way until you reach the final prototype. It’s interesting in the end to see the great variety of projects and to recognize that some of them have a real potential to be implemented. Great, great event that I will for sure repeat in the future.

For my first experience I was lucky enough to be in an excellent group with Vanda (the jewel), Ricardo (the IT guy), Gabi (the clusterizer) and Rita (the manager).
We created the “digories” service. A service where anyone can store digitally and physically their most important objects. Specially those meaningful objects that are passing from generation through generation. For those who want to know more about the project please watch the video and check the description on vimeo!
For more information or if you want to participate in the next GlobalServiceJam Lisbon jut follow the link!

It’s good to announce that I will be speaking at the INDEPENDENT DESIGN WEEK in Zaragoza (IDW Zgz) together with Inês next March 12th. We will talk on “How can future innovations can be so influenced by our own past and the importance of a society that values connectivity over isolation and creativity over guessed formulation”.
Thanks Gabriel for your invitation. Looking forward to meet your city.

In september 2011 I was invited by Lisbonlovers to produce a video for their brand. We brainstormed around the “feelings for the city” and in the end we came up with the concept of making a video as a postcard where basically you could pass to someone what you like the most about the beautiful city of Lisbon.
After this it was just fun. Helmets, vespa, going out with a camera, black board and some chalk a sardine and a lot of guts to approach all of those amazing people who contributed for the video.
Some weeks tuning everything, refining, finding the perfect rhythm for the video narrative, iterating again, trying to convince Márcia and EMI that her song was the perfect fit and just let things take their natural course.
In the end we just let love do the job. More than 10.000 views on Vimeo. Hundreds of people sharing and talking about it. 700 new fans on their Facebook page and counting…and all of this in just 4 days. I’m amazed.Thanks everyone for sharing this love.

In the last year I’ve been jumping between Lisbon and Berlin. I went to Hamburg and Munich. Prague. Thailand, Cambodia and Lao for vacations.
I’m kind of a quiet quiet guy who likes to have is own space to relax and reflect but after 8 months in Berlin – if I consider it as my base camp for this last period - I find myself sitting in the living room of my 3rd apartment here. What impact does this has in me? I’ve been thinking about this. Everything in Berlin moves really fast. Even the city itself moves fast. One year is cool to live in “Kreuzberg”, the next year will be cool to live in “Prenzlauer Berg” and I can predict that in two years maybe “Wedding” or “Schöneberg” will be on the run for the coolest place to live here. I’m not betting on “Neukölln” because that’s this years new trend and this means it’s already out of fashion. Being trendy in not trendy anymore.

Pedro just turned thirty three and he is a really nice person. He is not only a nice guy because he brought a great bottle of wine for the dinner at my place but also because If you could take empathy and give it a shape, Pedro would fit the description. A gentleman with hearth and sense of humor. A man who’s never alone because he likes to surround himself by friends and listen to a good story. If some people say that happiness is contagious. Believe me. He can contaminate you with his smile. Pedro is a faithful worker. He’s working in the same company for six years now and he is fine with that. He talks about the culture of the company and how that culture suites his needs and he never uses the word “change”. He is not unhappy with what he has. He is now in Berlin because his company was able to recognize that the importance of being in contact with a different culture, engaging with other people and methods has an impact at a personal level and influences positively the vision on the all structure.
Pedro is going back to Lisbon in a few weeks and he’s ready to go back to his normal environment where he still feels that he can change things around him for the “good”.

Back to my living room, sitting at my huge desk procrastinating and still absorbed by the latest Lana del Rey song.“- Lana del Rey? That’s so 2011.” This last sentence synthesises what someone said after watching me drooling while still looking at the computer. I was simply paralyzed by that sentence and since then I have been giving a lot of thoughts on this.Lana del Rey – maybe a product of the “old” industry – still haven’t put up an album out there and was already outdated. Why is this happening? Is this because our ego’s are more demanding than ever? We are reaching a peek where probably more than ever we don’t want to follow. We are expecting to discover the next big thing so that people end up following us. The question is that you need to keep up the pace and that means, giving a lot of time trying to find new stuff and slowly forgetting about the real good stuff. Everything is changing so fast that you don’t stick to anything anymore. We all wanna be “trend entrepreneurs”. Find something, put it out there, move to the next.

Why do we change so much? Every week I get an email from a friend who’s thinking about coming to Berlin. Every week I get to know someone from a different country and to be honest I don’t know how many creative people I have met in these 8 months, I’ve lost count on how many articles I’ve read about new “startups” and the fact that Berlin is becoming the new “Silicon Valley”, I’ve lost count on how many of those companies I saw packed in the same buildings but all of this isn’t necessarily bad. We know we can find creativity in the major cities and establishing theses connections with so many different people makes us more creative, agile and smart. Still I sometimes feel that some of these young entrepreneurs and “junior” companies are here for the gold and not for the passion of creation (not all of them of course). Some of these guys easily move from one seat to another because they quickly forget their vision others simply because they feel abused or fooled. Even the definition of “startup” is by itself an indicator of what you’re trying to design. Some years ago people would set up a company to be part of a system. To feed and to get food. Today it feels that most of the “startup” scene is feeding up itself with fast food. The “Get fat as quick as you can” approach has consequences. Fat people live less. Fast companies…I’m afraid that we can be entering the era of the “pop economics”.
I’ve also met in the last months some really great people in Berlin (special reference to my friends from “What Would Harry Do?” and to all the people involved in the Stanford d.school workshop on “Entrepreneurial Spirit” with George Kembel) and Lisbon (amazing what Beta-i has done in such a short time) that are honestly trying to help some of these companies in being more sustainable at a long term and gaining more awareness on the principles behind their “designs”.

Sometimes we forget but we should give more value the ones who can stick to something for a longer period. Who are able to go through all the ups and downs of the first years. I get surprised when someone tells me he is working in the same company for 5 years years but in the end…shouldn’t we give credit to that? Weren’t these people capable of creating their own place at a small or big company or even creating their own project? Aren’t most of the successful examples about compromise and perseverance? Shouldn’t we all take the time to put our hands on things, to make our businesses grow more sustainable, to not loose track on our vision and to build a playground where we can design our own future?
I feel that one of the reasons that makes us want to change so much is when we feel we don’t have the power to change things anymore. And we should not loose anytime the feeling that we can still influence things around us.

There’s not so many genuine idols in the creative industries anymore. Yesterday’s idols created something we could grab with our hearts, today’s “new type” of idols create something that we can grab with our hands and egos.
If we think about it, and to see how things changed quickly in the last years, no one knows who the hell invented the MSN Messenger (in 1995) but everyone knows who invented Facebook, Craigslist or Google.
We are just changing all the time because we are not capable of maintaining our focus on what really matters…to us.
Decades ago the idols created art and today they create ways to pack things. Decades ago the music felt unpredictable and inspiring. Today the one’s who risk to do it are out of fashion by their second album because is not fun anymore. The one’s who still get it, live in the world of “copy paste” where everything is created do satisfy and not to surprise. I like Lana because in the industry someone understood that there was an intersection market between the perishable and the delightful. In the future my dear friend Pedro might still be working in the same company while we won’t be listening to Lana del Rey anymore – Unfortunately.

The end.
The 7 months in HPI School of Design Thinking are over. 3 main projects, 3 great teams. A lot of fun and hard work. A lot of struggle. A lot of stupid ideas. A lot of thinking. A lot of good ideas. A lot of friends. Connections for the future. A lot of bad days. Great days. Speedy presentations. Responsibility. Learning. Understanding. A lot of team work. A lot of awareness on your own process. A bunch of post-its and colorful pens. A knowledge sharing platform for kids in 3 weeks. 6 weeks developing a motivational campaign to bring adolescents to a boring exhibition and a 12 week project on the topic of design thinking that ended up in style with a website prototype, a working app for the iPad that measures empathy (-Is that even possible? Oh Yes!) and a big show with UFO’s flying around (we still want a magician to make us disappear in the end!).

I know it sounds a bit crazy but in the end everyone realizes that what comes out of it is gaining some more expertise on how to deal with problems and how to overcome them, how to deal with the different team dynamics along the way, how to manage potential clients and how to show them that it is possible to achieve success “via” applying different and sometimes more “abstract” methods.
In the end what we want and most of the times what we have is implementable ideas that will actually help the project partners being more innovative and profitable in the future. That’s is our hope.

And now…what’s coming next for me? I still don’t know but I’m ready. Big challenges? Bring them on.

Hi Louise,
I found this email somewhere on the web but I don’t know if this “Louise” is the one who wrote the book “Beyond the Brain“…well, I suppose it is so here I go…

I’m a brand designer who likes to read random books about different topics and I have to confess that I have this “thing” about the brain…maybe it’s because Damásio is Portuguese like me, Jonah Lehrer is entertaining and I really love his writings or Daniel Pink was able to fool me for some time (Daniel, no worries, I like your books)!
I was just amazed by what I’ve read from you. Sometimes it feels like everyone is wrong for such a long time and maybe that’s because of some individual obsession to go on with a strong belief (for example Darwin is right but what if he’s wrong?). You suggest that you believe and I find that so simple, amazing and convincing. It gives me more space to think that you can be right about this and it’s a “body-blowing” (: sensation (by the way, I was not looking at my keyboard when I wrote some of these words, and I also have to think the numbers with my fingers before I dial a number on the cell phone).

Thank you very much for inspiring me.
Hope to talk to you one day.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Dear Rui

Please excuse the brevity of this message, but it’s right in the middle of exams, and I’m up to my ears in marking at the moment, but I did want to respond and say thanks very much indeed for your very kind words, and I’m so pleased you liked the book. I must say the nicest thing so far about writing it has been getting in touch with such a variety of people, from different fields, who have found something interesting in it.

So, as I say, sorry this is a bit brief, but thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to write.

(June, 16th – 2011)There are several reasons which lead me to write this post. 1. I’m not sleepy. 2. I’ve wanted to write about the role of design. 3. Erik Spiekermann will give a small talk to the HPI School of Design Thinking in two weeks and I remembered that I opened a lesson that I gave at IADE (Institute for the Arts and Design) in March this year with a picture from him and a quote.

In 2010 I wrote here that in 2000 I felt embarrassed when I’ve been asked about what design magazines I knew at that point. As the “pain” was so great at the time, I thought about using the same tactics with students from 2nd year in Communication Design from IADE to provoke them. I’ve opened the first slide with just a name. This name was “Erik Spiekermann”. I asked if anyone recognized him from the audience and the answer was… silence.
As I no longer show my portfolio, I do not like to repeat presentations and two days before I’ve had almost nothing prepared, I’ve decided to “use” that class as a “testing scenario” for some future presentations. Basically, I was able to get a group of students to contribute with “insights”, ideas, opinions and words to a talk I’ve been preparing for months for an upcoming Ignite Portugal.
Here we go.

The brain – right and left hemisphere – thinks. Daniel H. Pink put into “clear language” what neuroscientists found out in recent years. Phrenology has been left behind and the idea that our brain is an integrated and interchangable system is accepted by all. Even so, for those with a more visual mind – more to the right – the idea of ​​seeing a 3D brain with highlighted areas as activated by stimuli is not so different to see a skull scratched in pencil.
Sorry scholars, but logic is the same, only the current one is based on scientific facts and not assumptions “romanticized” in the early nineteenth century. Recent articles refer the activation of areas on the right side of the brain when we are driven by something emotional and areas on the left side when we are tempted to rationalize. Despite these observations, I believe that non-overlapping one hemisphere over the other is essential for finding balance in a decision-making process and by doing so, we are favoring creativity.
Today’s design is not only the graphics design or product designers, it’s the design of entrepreneurial leaders who design processes, CEOs who design the future of an innovative company, of kids who design software, and these, we are tempted to ” think “, – curious – think more with the left hemisphere. Uhm … is it really? My left side doesn’t let me say yes.”

There’s no lack of ideas for my next talk on Ignite Portugal. A year ago I started writing some texts that sometimes I called “design chakras”, other times “pairing design”, other “Anatomy of a designer” and others “good design come in pairs”. Basically these texts speak about the relationship that our body (in pairs) might have with the way we relate to the design and how “we design”. The “essay” about the brain has already been registered (the one you just wrote) and the other texts are under construction (sometimes things get stuffed on the shelf longer than expected).

After Spiekermann (appetizer), the main course.
For each “pair” – starting with the brain (and here it’s supposed that we see the slideshare) – a question and subsequent response from the students.What’s the brain for?
Think, process, rationalize, decide, create, develop, structure, criticize. (… and I thought it was for garnish) and eyes?
Observe, analyze, transmit information, eating, collect feelings, analyze, decode, move images to the brain. (… But aren’t the eyes just to see?) … Ears?
Listen, hear, capturing information, intrude, orient, balance. (… oh, and to put those white headphones that everyone uses.Nipples? (this one was dangerous)
Excite, breastfeeding, bristle, seduce. (… ya … passion and such)Hands?
Feel, touch, learn, work, express, speak, appreciate, cherish, projecting, defend. (but isn’t the hand only to play with the mouse?)Balls? (… read with a squeaky voice ‘cause it will hurt)
Breed, the fruit of life, courage, to seed, testosterone, fun, fragility, creativity.Legs?
Support, move forward, move, strength. (… and to use IADE – we had 7 floors to the top – stairs when the elevator failed)Feet?
Root, kicking, stumble, tap, dance. (… and walk as well, let me at least get the credit for this).

The answers get to be creepy (in a good way) coming from a 2nd year class… and the most curious feeling is to sense that their intuition tells them almost everything they need to know until the end of their careers and that for them to to get to these conclusions it does not take 40 years of experience and 5000 books. If the “talk” comes to happen one day, the authorship will be fairly shared with my “peers” (forgive me but I had to make this quibble). Thank you.

Basically, the message I want to convey is that sometimes we, professional and trained designers, forget that there is life beyond the eyes and worse than that, we forget that there is life beyond us. I think we should all make an effort to drop, soon enough, our “Gegos” (giant egos ®) that undermine our profession’s future and make us – designers - to continue to occupy the chairs facing the wall…
Customers are mean because we don’t want to know about them, work is bad and we blame the boss, the briefing is a piece of shit and we blame the creative director. Design cannot be about complaining, design is about asking questions and listen, collect data, change the point of view, is to get hands-on, is to do the job in two different ways to see which one is the best one, is being able to draw what and who you want to become and how you want to do it. I believe that leaving our eyes for in and outside our bodies we are able to understand much more clearly our role as designers and then take a key step to understand what design is at its most complex form.